If You See This On Your Parked Car, It’s Not Good Luck. It’s Deadly.

ST. LOUIS COUNTY, MO (KTVI) — A Jefferson County woman’s Facebook post has set off “alarm bells” in the minds of holiday shoppers.
There’s a new scam going around this holiday season. It surfaced around the same time last year, the Maryland Attorney General reported. Now it’s happening in St. Louis, and spreading.

One absolutely horrific fact about the holidays, is the sheer amount of scams that come to light. Just the other day it seems, there was notification of a “Walmart Check” scam designed to clear out your bank account, and now it turns out there’s one even worse making a second appearance. While the Walmart scam sends a letter in the mail, this one is actually much simpler, using only a computer and a printer.

The focus of the scam is for the person committing the crime to place a fake $100 bill on the windshields of shoppers inside the store. It could be a grocery store or a department store, but either way you’ve now got some fake money just lying on your windshield! By the time you notice it you’ll have more than likely already unlocked your car, possibly even started it, and then you see it – the ‘money’. At this point the nearby thieves expect you to get out of your running vehicle to retrieve it, at which point they hop in the drivers seat and take off with your car.

The latest almost victim of this scam comes from St. Louis, Missouri and her name is Kyri Viehman.

Luckily for her she hadn’t even noticed anyone had left anything behind while she was still in the parking lot, if she hadn’t then her son sitting in the backseat may have ended up as missing as her car would have been. Last year, the Maryland Attorney General saw numerous reports of these fake pieces of currency, so it may be that time of year for it to make it’s comeback.

With that in mind, please make sure to share this with all your family and friends, there’s no reason anyone should fall victim to a scam as horrible as this and finding a replacement vehicle while you wait for the investigation can be even more costly – the last thing anyone needs this holiday season. Remember to stay safe, to enjoy the holidays as they were meant, and to speak up if you see anything like this happening in your town!